Teacher Professional Development Program Concluding Day was held on 29th August, 2023.
The teachers teaching the five main subjects gathered together in their respected department; Tibetan, Science, Social Science, English and Math and shared and summarized the annual Teacher Professional Development Program.
The attendees were served with tea and snacks during the session and also served a special lunch funded by the (DoE) Department of Education, CTA.
TCV School Chauntra: PGPs and Collaborative Practices
Leadership of the School Principal Mr. Choeying Dhoundup la and the Headmaster Mr. Dawa Gyatso la and the Assistant Headmaster Mr. Karma Tashi la, the school is successfully implementing the project. The teachers are given the choice of choosing either PGP or Collaborative so that whatever the teachers chose will be more quality based. The project started with the Orientation and a workshop by Mr. Kalsang Wangdue la followed by the implementation phase. Right now, most of the Lesson Study groups had their third cycle. The School had set two separate periods of 30 minutes on Tuesday and Wednesday during which the teachers of both the Junior and Senior Sections do their PGPs or Collaborative Practices. The Teachers’ Reading corner had been successfully installed in the staff room itself for the teachers to get easy access. The log book has been maintained and the books borrowed are always entered. The books are borrowed by the teachers for their PGPs and Collaborative practices.
Annual Professional Growth Plan (PGP):
Some of the teachers had decided to do PGP this year. Right after the Orientation, they decided their own PGPs and submitted to the school head. The teachers worked on their own PGPs whenever they get free time apart from the two special periods. Some of the PGPs the teachers have are: To prepare an Anecdotal Report of students; to do case study of three focus students. During the course of their PGP process, they documented their progress, obstacles etc. One to one meeting with the teachers about their PGPs was done by the TPD and Curriculum Officer, Mr. Kalsang Wangdue la during his school visit.
Collaborative Practices in the School:
Both the junior and Senior Sections have their own collaborative practices namely Book Discussion and Lesson Study Groups. The groups met during their PGP periods and followed the process properly.
Tibetan Teachers’ Book Discussion:
The teachers teaching Tibetan Subject in both the sections unanimously decided to do Book Discussion as a part of their Collaborative practice. There were around 12 teachers including the Religious Teacher. The book they discussed on was the popular Tibetan book by Khenpo Lodoe, “Dus-Rab-Kyi- Ngada”. The teachers met during their TPD period and discussed the book thoroughly. The plan had already been laid to share the main gist with rest of the teachers in coming week. PPT of the discussion is coming soon.
English Book Discussion Group:
A group of three teachers including the school Librarian had formed their own group to study and worked on a book review. The book they were discussing was “Positive Discipline”. The teachers regularly met and discussed on the book with additional materials available in the school library. They had prepared some charts carrying wordings on Positive discipline. They also planned to publish one small booklet containing the main gist of the book, to be later distributed to various schools.
Lesson Study Groups:
Both the Junior and Senior section have Lesson Study Groups on two subjects namely:
English (Senior and Junior) :
The Senior teachers had prepared a detailed sample lesson plan for Notice Writing for class V – VI. They also worked with the Junior English teachers and prepared a class VI lesson “Kite” which they shared with rest of the TCV English teachers recently. The Junior English teachers comprising of 3, worked on Non-Fiction writing. They had collected mentor text on topics related to animals. They were now working on preparing a sample lesson plan.
Mathematics (2 juniors and 1 senior):
The two junior Maths groups had their teaching instruction in Tibetan Language. They had worked together and prepared a lesson on Word Problem and Fraction respectively. The senior Math teachers comprising of 4 teachers had prepared a lesson plan on Parallel Lines and Transversal of class VIII. All the groups had completed the full cycle of the lesson Study and they were on their way to their third round. The lesson Plans would be soon uploaded. During the interaction with these groups, they shared their processes and the obstacles they had encountered.
TPD kicked off at TCV Chauntra
TCV School Chauntra held an official function to kick off school-based Teacher Professional Development (TPD) programs for the 2015 school year. The school has close to 50 teachers and educators who will engage themselves in a variety of teacher-directed collaborative practices to foster their professional growth. The function was led by the school Principal Mr. Choeying Dhondup and the Headmaster Mr. Dawa Gyatso, and participated by all the teachers. Teachers shared their collaborative as well as individual professional growth plans and engaged themselves in dialogue to further explore topics chosen for this year.
The school’s TPD programs include a number of teachers’ book clubs and lesson study teams. Besides, every teacher is working on an annual professional growth plan (PGP). Teachers have selected following professional literature to read and discuss.
There are two lesson study teams – Social Studies group and English language group – and they will work on a research lesson by following the lesson study cycle
- design
- enact
- reflection/re-design,
- re-enact,
- reflection/summarization.
The school has created two extra periods per week for teachers to work in their collaborative group and pursue their plan. The school will conclude TPD programs in the month of October.